Shain­na Tikas­ingh

De­spite a lack of labour and bad ac­cess roads, the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm As­so­ci­a­tion held its an­nu­al Fruit Fes­ti­val ti­tled Win with Fruits at the Nu Im­age Sim­plex, New Grant on June 15. The event was staged to ed­u­cate young peo­ple about the im­por­tance of the Agri­cul­ture sec­tor and show­cased a va­ri­ety of ex­ot­ic lo­cal fruits, in­clud­ing pineap­ples, ba­nanas, sug­ar­cane, pas­sion fruit, paw paw and bar­ba­dine. "We are try­ing to change 50 years maybe of ne­glect, maybe not be­ing able to ed­u­cate our­selves suf­fi­cient­ly and not be­ing able to make prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our­selves," said pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Ra­mash Ram­sumair.

In his fea­ture ad­dress, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath out­lined the rea­son for the fes­ti­val. "The hope to rein­tro­duce many of the once pop­u­lar fruits that was once for­got­ten," he said, and en­cour­aged young peo­ple to get in­volved in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. "Our de­mand for lo­cal fruits far out­sells our lo­cal sup­ply," the Min­is­ter said. By sup­port­ing lo­cal pro­duce, "mon­ey goes in­to the pock­ets of lo­cal farm­ers."

Rambhrose Teelucks­ingh, a pineap­ple farmer and mem­ber of the as­so­ci­a­tion, high­light­ed some of the ma­jor chal­lenges faced by farm­ers in Table­land. "Labour is a se­ri­ous prob­lem, we can't get trans­port to our ac­cess roads be­cause of the con­di­tion and li­cens­ing for ve­hi­cles is a prob­lem." The Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Namde­v­co, the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) and MAFAS Ltd had dis­plays at the fes­ti­val. Stu­dents from Princes Town Pres­by­ter­ian pri­ma­ry school and North Trace Gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry school, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Neela Khan and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Clifton De Coteau were in at­ten­dance.